After a trip to London and back at the backend of the week, I couldn’t be bothered going far at the weekend. So on Sunday with the sun shining and the frost still lying fairly thick at midday I headed along to Swanswater for a few hours. I usually enjoy my winter fishing, especially out in the sun on an otherwise cold day.
But for some reason, there was no heat at all in the sunshine and I found it both hard physically and “tactically”. As I arrived fish were being caught and Alistair shared with me that Friday had fished poorly ( I think he said one fish was caught) but Saturday had switched on and fished really well. It sounded like there were fish being caught on this Sunday as well. Though one angler retiring to the cabin for a hot cup of tea said he was struggling.
There was plenty of room and I opted to fish from the Island into the channel, as I usually get some sort of reaction there. Frankly, I failed. I fished an Intermediate line and tried a few flies and different approaches but not so much as a pull did I get. Even with the wee Goldie on!
I was listening in to a few anglers who had been there all morning and it sounded like bloodworm patterns fished slow were what had been catching, so for the second half of my four hours, I changed to a floating line and buzzers straight-lined, both from the island then from the peg before the bridge.
Still nothing. I did hook a very small wild Brown Trout just around the burn mouth. But that doesn’t count, and so for my last hour (probably nearer 45 minutes), I retired back to the wee ponds.
With the light fading albeit something of a spectacular sunset, the shallow angle of the sun from behind was making the fish here quite visible. There are a fair few golden trout still about so they stand out in this kind of light. I stayed on the floater but went back to small lures, and though they did not seem interested in another fling of the Goldie, they were following a small flashback Diawl Bach with an unconventional bright red marabou tail all the way across the pond right to my feet before losing interest.
I moved this dropper fly to the point but it seemed to get less interest which struck me as odd. With literally minutes to spare I tied on one of Fish4Flies white Apache lures. After a few casts of this ensuring it was good and wet ( it doesn’t sink until it’s well soaked) a fish moved towards it and as long as I kept it moving, it followed less than a hands width behind.
I was nearly out of room to retrieve it and with everything very visible, allowed the Apache to drop a few inches in the water under its own weight, the fish initially appeared to lose interest but as soon as I took up the minimal slack it turned and took it. I saw it way before I would have felt it and was able to hook up the fish, a pretty big Golden Trout for the wee ponds I would estimate it was getting on for a three pound fish, and a stunning deep gold, almost Orange (probably aided by the light thrown off by the sunset) it was too.
So one at the death but I was quite glad to be heading for the heat of the car as the ponds were icing up a little and I notice Alastair has the de-icers on now too.
